Have you ever performed a class survey? Icebreakers with a new cohort, warmers, lead-ins, consolidating language, reviewing themes… class surveys are dynamic.

As obvious as this may sound, they also get students on their feet. For me personally, the process of doing language requires movement and getting students up provides a change of pace from any sedentary involvement that may have preceded it.

Class surveys promote interactive communication, give opportunities to consolidate language, allow students to personalise their responses and go beyond typical utterances to extend their discourse further. A simple class survey could be performed with a beginner class; the language is provided by the teacher and interaction rarely shift beyond the boundaries of expected adjacency pairs. However, the same class survey might also be performed by a more proficient cohort as a springboard for less predictable interactive communication. I hasten to add that both the beginner and more proficient user may seek to extend their utterances when their interest is piqued, e.g., two motorcycle enthusiasts, the first being a beginner and the second an intermediate user of English, will almost certainly wish to say more to their peers when promoted with questions from a class survey on modes of transport. The difference being the former may rely more on interlanguage, paralinguistic and other nonverbal features to bolster their message.

Here is a class survey on sports. It can be used with any age group or level but was designed with low levels in mind.

You can download an editable workbook of this class survey here: Class survey (sports)

Alternatively, you can download a PDF version here: Class survey (sports)

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